my friend tells me
that I am all
one could ask for

so I tell her about an irony
of how I was loved into me
and raised into a man
by all the women
who loved me right
and the ones
I did not

that I was seventeen
when my best-friend
wanted to take her life

that she told me her heart was blue
and I forgot to tell her
seventy percent of the world
was the same as her

and that I
would bring her every shade of blue
if that meant her knowing
she was one of them
and all of me

that the last time i saw my mother
she was proud and crying
and for a brief moment
when I looked at her face
the airport was silent
as if the world had lost it’s noise
or I, the ability to hear
that either way
things have stayed rather silent since

so I told my friend today
that I was only
all the women I had loved
that I was only
my mother’s son